And homo sapiens is the only species that is relatively free of having to be compatible with the environment and can even destroy it. The environment of the very modern homo sapiens is the whole world.
Beavers tear down trees, change courses of rivers, and flood entire forest areas just to make themselves a cozy pool in which to swim so they won’t have to walk instead. Unlike many mammals closely related to them, they have eliminated the need to hibernate, spending the winter months eating food that they stored up and grooming/socializing inside their dens.
How do humans or beavers falsify the principle of selection?
Beavers do not willfully destroy their environment.
Again:
Beavers do not falsify the Darwinistic principle of selection.
Unfortunately I cannot get into the psyche of a beaver in order to determine whether it does anything willfully. However, the case is hardly made for human behavior to be unlike that of beavers. Both transform the environment to suit their desires first and foremost, and in a way that is careless for the consequences.
double
There is no beaver equivalent to setting off a bunch of explosives because it is fun to watch or because they are pissed off at their dads. Beavers are very destructive to local ecosystems, though nicely within the u of cycles that ecosystems can handle. I do understand why you focused on them, though. With us doing our stuff, when beavers do their thing, it does further simplify ecosystems. They are like little punk brothers to the adult gang. Though extremely little. Like 4 year olds.
But as you say transform the environment to suit their desires, yes. But their desires are about food and shelter. When they play, it is not destructive. Their goal is not destruction. And they won’t go damn a stream to ca up the fish they hate in that stream. They will do it for food. So the stream they are in is enough, until they have to move for food reasons.
We are a species, even when we are intentionally being destructive, that would risk an entire planet because the company we are in wants to get all the farmers in the third world to have to pay for their seeds. Sure, some of the people tell themselves they are saving sthe worlds’ poor, but that is not what is happening.
We’ll put nanoproducts on the market - we can haggle over the chances - that will each have some probability of, say, killing this bird species or that type of plant.
Beavers do not know the potential wider effects of their acts and cannot eliminate categories. We know the wider effects and do eliminate categories and we will risk permanently eliminating categories to make it easier for us to masturbate without standing up or have a better shoehorn.
And then, from where I started, we will destroy because some of us love to destroy, not because it will provide food for our children, though we do that also, even when they suffer from obesity already.
If a beaver really destroyed its environment like humans do, then it had to have the same intelligence, it had to know what “destroying of the environment” means, it had to be as cynical as humans are.
Beavers are not capable of destroying their environment on purpose, thus willfully, consciously. They know absolutely nothing about destroyimg of the environment, nothing about ecological destruction … and so on.
Most of human deatructive behavior is not due to a desire to destroy, but due to a lack of care for the consequences while obtaining something we desire.
That is not to say that we don’t destroy things for pure amusement at the destruction, but my opinion is that that’s a lot more rare than the former.
I’ve seen such things as elephants knocking down a tree in the process of scratching an itch, and rhinos stomping and stabbing at small animals that pose no threat to them and they have no interest in eating, simply because it upset them.
What I am trying to get at is that, taking into considerations the differences in territoriality and other behaviours between rodents and apes and pachiderms(sp?), I wouldn’t think that there is anything beyond natural in human behavior, and that between beavers and rhinos and humans, the difference is a matter of degrees.
Arminius, see the above.
In adition, Arminius, you seem to be making the case that the artificial environments we have created are buffering us from natural selective pressure. How does that falsify the selection principle?
Hold on now!!
What’s wrong with the beaver??!!
It’s dams create entire thriving ecosystems in the form of flooded estuaries!!
It’s true. There are so many things today that us humans have created that prevent natural selection, which means the less evolved breed to out number the more evolved of which the human species will suffer HUGE consequences for.
If what I said is what you are arguing Arminius, then we think alike, judging from what I have seen so far.
Fine, ignore the question.
I voted no by the way. Just because it does not happen much anymore due to human interference/creating does not mean it does not happen or is not capable of happening.
We’re talking about natural selection right? The stronger surviving while the weaker falling?
Personally, I dont think it falsifies it, it is still capable of happening… It is just a matter of timing, one day it will hit hard, well at at least I think so.
Unless you’re asking something else?
The thread title. I am waiting for the case to be made.
Regression, domestication, is not part of evolution?
Dysgenics is not part of eugenics?
Has man stopped evolving because he now determines the standards to measure fitness?
Have you heard of memetic selection?
What happens to millions of years of nurturing, we call nature, does it disappear because in manmade environments we set up rules prohibiting their full expression, or their acknowledgment, or even their recognition?
Training/educating generations to be blind to appearances does not make the apparent go away.
Can we train/educate a chimpanzee to be human, by forcing it to imitate certain behaviors?
Is there no cost to protecting the weak the stupid and the ill from culling?
Is man exempt from world because he can fabricate artificial environments and use words to manipulate abstractions, to the degree that his words no longer refer to anything perceptible, anything experienced?
You are deciding what is most fit by seeing what survives. But Darwin proposed that what survives will be what was most fit. It is a circular definition.
Real people do not define it that way. They propose an idea concerning fitness involving strength, agility, intelligence,… various other applicable talents. The question then becomes one of whether those “already declared to be fit” are really the ones that will survive. That makes it a legitimate question. And the answer to that question is “not always”. And that answer reduces the Darwinian principle down to a “tendency”, not the prevailing “always true” law.
This is not circular logic. That is just saying the same thing two ways. Circular logic would be to define what is fit by using survival, and then defining survival by using fit. The definition of survival is that which does not become extinct, and it is not dependent on the meaning of fit.
If you want to make a definition of fitness, as one used by “real people”, and then refute it, knock yourself out papito.
But then, that’s not the Darwinian principle, is it?
The moment you say ‘most’ it is a concession. That needs to be noted. Then from there, how much of the hate in humans infuses actions that seem to be about other things, but include or are even primarily an urge to destroy? I think it is a lot more than people like to admit. This can be anything from sthe desire to enter war or conflict not simply to gain resources, but because the urge to destroy want to rationalize an outlet…to thinks that destruction is a part of conspicuous consumption - I can throw out so I am cool, powerful, rich, better than you - to destruction for spite. If I cannot have it or cannot be the only one who has it, no one has it. In many ways we destroy for destructions sake or for what we decide destruction symbolizes. And animals other than us do not do this.
I
And warding off, pushing back, even killing when it seems unnecessary to a third party likely is coupled to traits that protect boundaries, keep young safe, keep them in training. But sure animals destroy, but what you are talking about simply indicates that animals are not perfectly efficient machines. They will destroy more than they use. But they cannot create values and symbols to increase this and would not understand why they should. They cannot hate life, seek to spite God or humanity or life.
The phrase beyond nature seems beside the point. There is in our nature, it seems, something that would even be willing to destroy all things, in some moods. We have in us something that is antilife and animals do not, even if they will kill. A cat may take pleasure in slow killing a mouse - I don’t know if this happens in wild animals anywhere but let’s say it does - but may be training, even if it is a rather sick act regardless. Humans will kill whole areas for fun, with no gain. Unless we are preparting to destroy planetary ecosystems or something and this is beneficial in some way.
Of course the mental abilities we have allow us to destory in ways animals can not. But our mental natures and what these have taken in as habits also give us a whole set of intentions I do not encounter in the rest of nature.
Related, but not the same…there is no other animal that would hate its own strength or vitality or desires or emotions. It will use its whole nature and accept its whole nature, not taking pride but accepting and certainly not crushing under its own judgment.
We hate nature in us also and try to destroy that.
This antivitalist thanatonic hate is unique to us.
There is nothing like a platypus. There is nothing like us. But our uniqueness is that we include anti life.
That is exactly what I said. And that is “circular”.
Circular means: A = B because B = A
“fit” = “survived” because “survived” = “fit”
If you want to make a definition of fitness, as one used by “real people”, and then refute it, knock yourself out papito.
But then, that’s not the Darwinian principle, is it?
[/quote]
The “Darwin principle” implies that what people think of as being fit is what survives. The intent behind its promotion is to define what survives as that which was most fit and thus best. It is an excuse to hide WHY it was that one people survived and another didn’t.